Fair Market Value Challenged by Faith

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Recently, my mom came home to tell me of a big real estate deal her pastor discussed one Sunday at church, involving millions of dollars in real estate. Obviously, I had to find out more.

Its an issue around the site that the Sayreville government obtained by eminent domain from Faith Ministries, NL (National Lead) Industries, New Jersey Highway Authority, The City of Perth Amboy and a few other parties, and underwent almost a decade in litigation over market price and fair compensation. The land has also been subject to massive contamination and environmental clean up efforts since at least 1998, and received millions of dollars from the Sandy Fund.

Here’s a photo I snapped of one of the empty lots:

The Plan

In 2006 Sayreville Economic Redevelopment Authority (SERA) passed an official ordinance that designated much of its waterfront land as a “Redevelopment Area”. The development of over 900 Acres includes every type of attraction, retail, hotel, residential, waterfront marina, office, you name it–see for yourself in the video posted on Luxury Point’s YouTube channel at the end of this post.

SERA and the various property owners were quietly negotiating the acquisition of the land in the early 2000’s, when eventually one or both parties became disenchanted with the process, prompting a series of lawsuits alleging that SERA was low-balling the fair market value of the parcel to discount the cost of the cleanup. Meanwhile, the current owners, who had already begun the cleanup, refused to stop and turn the process over to SERA for fear of being coerced to accept an unfair offer. And so, Sayreville flexed their government muscle and condemned the land to acquire it by Eminent Domain. Read More Here

Holding Out On Faith

Today, it appears as though most of this has been settled, Sandy Fund provided millions to contribute towards the cleanup effort and the developer, O’Neill Properties, is moving forward with plans for at least part of the development. However, from the whisperings amongst the Faith Fellowship congregation, some of the land surrounding the church is still under negotiation, as Faith Fellowship holds out to collect on a larger sum. If you look carefully below, Faith Fellowship church and its surrounding property is on the north east portion of Parcel C, containing a bulk of the anticipated income stream of this site. And so, holding out on faith, looks like a good call.